“Don’t believe that those
who attacked the monastery in Latrun [last Monday], and mosques and churches did
it spontaneously, on their own and alone,” Abbas said on Saturday night at a
press conference in Ramallah. “The Netanyahu government condemns these things,
but it is not right,” he said. “If this was one of ours [who carried out these
types of actions], they [the Israelis] would go crazy and say we were
encouraging terrorism.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s spokesman
Mark Regev said that to imply that the government was “anything but totally
opposed to vigilante violence is an atrocious perversion of the truth.” Regev
said that Netanyahu dismissed Abbas’s statements as “ridiculous.”

Netanyahu, as well as the country’s top
leadership from President Shimon Peres down, roundly condemned a recent spate of
attacks that included a firebomb attack near Bat Ayin, the beating of an Arab
youth in Jerusalem and the vandalism at the Latrun
Monastery.

“Insinuating that the Israeli government is supportive of
these acts is not only the opposite of the truth, but sends a message of hatred,
confrontation and demonization of Israel,” Regev said. “This is the opposite of
what the [PA] leadership should be doing.”

Regev pointed out that those
responsible for the attack on a Palestinian taxi near Bat Ayin on August 16 and
the brutal attack on a Arab youth in Jerusalem’s Zion Square in the early hours
of August 18 have been arrested. Abbas’s allegations are baseless, he said, but
they are dangerous when coming from the Palestinian leadership.

Your comment must be approved by a moderator before being published on JPost.com.
Disqus users can post comments automatically.

Comments must adhere to our Talkback policy. If you believe that a comment has breached the Talkback policy, please press the flag icon to bring it to the attention of our moderation team.